If a strange photo has recently caught your eye while scrolling through your Facebook feed, you’re not alone.
Users who once used Facebook to connect with friends and family are increasingly complaining about random, spammy, and trashy content — much of it seemingly generated by artificial intelligence (AI) — appearing in their feeds.
Sometimes, these are obviously fake AI-generated images, like the now-infamous “Jesus Shrimp.” Other times, they’re old posts from real creators that appear to be shared by bot accounts to generate engagement. In some cases, they’re pages that share streams of seemingly harmless but random content — memes or movie clips, shared every few hours.
But spam is more than just a nuisance; it can also be used maliciously. Some spam pages appear to be designed to trick other users. In extreme cases, spam pages that gain followers could eventually be used, for example, by foreign actors seeking to sow discord ahead of elections, according to experts who study inauthentic behavior online.